Happy New Year, friends. I hope 2019 started well for you wherever you are. I can hear the whirring of our ceiling fan as I write this. We are in the middle of what promises to be a warm Melbourne summer. It feels good.

I love thinking about the past year before I start thinking about the new one. For me there is a necessary amount of reflection needed to move forward. It’s like I can’t begin until I’ve looked back. The Internet has a gazillion tools related to thinking about the past year and planning for the next one. But for me I love answering this question: What did I learn? Here are eight important lessons from 2018.

Small changes are everything

Ruth Chou Simmons of Gracelaced sums it up for me in an Instagram post, “We make progress when we make minor adjustments, repeatedly. Not seeing impressive fruit or immediate change isn’t failure; it’s formation.” I am clinging to this walking into 2019. Small shifts in the right direction. Fun fact: Since October I’ve been going live on Instagram Monday to Friday midday to chat about this topic, and you can follow along here.

There is a long chain of people and events that help guide our direction

The short story is that 2018 was the year I started thinking about teaching writing workshops. I explored possibilities (teaching women in prison how to write their story), and no one called me back. I tried other avenues and had a meeting or two that seemed promising, but then again, no one called me back. Then in a most unexpected way, a door opened in a place I did not seek out to teach a writing workshop. The first one is February 7. This is after 10 months of thinking (well, maybe a lifetime of thinking), some exploration, a few closed doors and a random email. But it began when I read the newsletter of a poet who wrote about teaching poetry in a women’s prison. It grew during another friend’s month-long stay with us and our many conversations about injustice. Dear friends and my husband validated the idea and encouraged me to keep going. Like all good things in my life, there was a chain of people who encouraged and loved and worked to bring this thing (slowly) to life.

Follow your instincts

One of the enduring lessons of adulthood is learning which instincts to follow and which ones to ignore, but learning to listen to the instincts that I know, that I know, that I know I need to follow have led to immeasurable joy. In the middle of the year, I had this feeling that I had to learn how to garden, and I had to ride a bike. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know that I could (I still don’t know if I can grow anything), but I knew I needed to try. I have. Both activities have been two of the best parts of the end of 2018. I look forward to much more of both in 2019.

I need my friends

Friendship in my 30s has been one of the sweetest gifts of my life. Yes, it unfolds at a different pace now, we all have less time for each other, but the slow work of building trust yields rewards. We all need those women who are going to stand with us, speak truth into our lives, ask us good questions, yank out weeds from our garden and laugh and laugh and laugh (and maybe watch the Royal Wedding together as well).

Go back to the doctor

I’ve always been a person who went to the doctor because of a problem and never went back. The first appointment is a general inquiry, there were usually tests done, but now I know it’s in the follow up appointments where two things happen: the doctor has to work harder to understand you, and you have to keep telling the truth about how you really are, about the treatment and whether or not it is working. This goes for mystery physical things and for emotional and psychological matters. Before this year I never went back. I thought I was too complicated. I thought things would get better on its own. In 2018 I saw my GP six times, and it led to a new kind of health and freedom in my life. I sprained my ankle and had to see a physiotherapist at least five times. It meant sitting with a medical professional who often took my health more seriously than I took it, and something about that forced me to take myself more seriously as well.

There’s no experience like losing someone you love

Two women I loved dearly died in 2018. Their lives are irreplaceable, and there is a grief in losing them that will never go away. It was a reminder that we are made by love, the love of God, the love of others. I feel so grateful to have known them and been loved by them.

Write it down

It doesn’t matter if it is an idea that came to me while I was driving or a longing I could voice to no one. If I wrote it down, I felt better. If I wrote it down, I was less resentful of people or circumstances. Somehow letting the ideas out, letting the words out helped me to live and helped me to realize I have more to do. If you want to know more about my journal and writing tools, I did a series of videos about that here.

Endings are hard, some endings are necessary

We are conditioned as a people to think that endings are all bad, which is why we delay our endings. We stay longer than we need to in organizations and relationships that cause death to our souls. This year we decided to end our commitment to something. It was a hard decision, one we put off for a long, long time, but I have a feeling it will lead to a beautiful beginning.